Clinton Still Has Time to Act in Bosnia Current Course Will Only Lead to `Quagmire' No One Wants, Unless the White House Reverses Its Dangerous Stance

Article excerpt

PRESIDENT Clinton publicly turned a cold shoulder to Bosnian
President Alija Itzetbegovic last week, ruling out military
intervention against Serbian war criminals he and Secretary of
State Warren Christopher had threatened just one week earlier.
Another opportunity lost. Another waffle. Another dishonorable and
dangerous choice.

Mr. Clinton is on a collision course with the Bosnian
"quagmire" he has rightly sought to avoid. The foreign-policy
specialists in the White House gave up on Bosnia in February, when
Mr. Christopher made his first and only speech laying out the
administration's policy on the crisis. Though it was not quite
understood at the time, Christopher accepted that the genocide and
ethnic cleansing, carried out by Bosnian Serbs under the skillful
direction of Serb dictator Slobodan Milosevic, had worked.

We accepted a Serb victory. Then we threw the "full weight" of
United States diplomacy, as Christopher put it, behind the shameful
Vance-Owen negotiations and ruled out US military intervention.
Since then, our policy has not changed. Only our rhetoric has
changed - often on a daily basis, tailored to put a spin on the
ugly events on the ground. The Vance-Owen plan was discarded, only
to be replaced by the Milosevic/Tudjman partition plan. US support
for that negotiating process, based entirely on the demands of war
criminals, has remained steadfast.

Even our tough rhetorical support when the Bosnians requested an
additional 4 percent of their own territory earlier this month
leaves unaltered our basic support of the Milosevic-Owen ultimatum:
Sign - or else! Clinton made this clear to Mr. Izetbegovic in
Washington.

If the Bosnians succumb to our pressure and agree to one of the
partition plans on the table in Geneva, Congress faces a tough
decision: whether to order young American men and women to help
implement such an agreement.

If we send troops, American soldiers will die protecting Serbian
war criminals and their newly acquired territory.

The agreement will not end the bloodshed and genocide in Bosnia.
It will prolong it. The Serbs will complete the genocide in their
"republic" while the Croats will ethnically cleanse the land they
claim in Bosnia. Muslims, Jews, and mixed families will be left to
the tiny, helpless rump Bosnian state that remains. Fighting will
continue. More refugees will result. And we will find matters to be
too messy to implement the accord.

The next move is easy to see. Serbs and Croats return to a fight
in Krajina, a crucial third of Croatian territory that Serbs
occupy. The Serbs begin a genocide of Albanians in Kosovo, which,
unlike Bosnia, is recognized as Serb territory. Neighboring
Macedonia - where the US has 300 troops, despite the fact that we
do not have diplomatic relations - will be drawn into the next
Balkan bonfire. …